


'til mermaids wake us

by Anonymous



Category: The Lighthouse (2019)
Genre: M/M, Marriage within dreams becomes real, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:40:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25503805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Ephraim digs out a mermaid from a hole in the mattress of his cot and thinks that's the weirdest this is going to get
Relationships: Thomas Wake/Ephraim Winslow
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24
Collections: Anonymous, Just Married Exchange 2020





	'til mermaids wake us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiriamKenneath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriamKenneath/gifts).



Ephraim digs out a mermaid from a hole in the mattress of his cot and thinks that's the weirdest this is going to get, a little carved scrimshaw piece that could be bought and sold in any seaside tourist town left like a piece of a fairy tale pea designed to see how well he'll sleep. He's stuck on an island with a grumpy old man for four weeks, but he's survived worse. In a way, this is an escape. If there's anyone who finds out what he's done, what he stood aside and let happen, there's worse waiting for him up north than a supervisor on a power trip with a sharp tongue.

The next four weeks of his life are going to be this old man farting in his sleep and his terrible cooking; lugging kerosene up to the lantern room and their chamber pots out to be emptied; and fighting off these over-interested gulls.

Wake says it's bad luck to kill a sea bird. Ephraim could not care less. If these birds don't back off, he's going to strangle one and put it in the stew. It's got to be better than the briney lobster Wake cooks until it's rubbery and soft, tasteless and impossible to chew.

He hates it here, but at least it's better than rolling timber.

He's wrong on most counts. 

Right about the jobs he's stuck doing and Wake's terrible cooking, though.

At night, he dreams. In the distance, a bell tolls. He stands at the shore as the waves rush to meet him and walks rings in the sand, toward and away, toward and away. He dreams about sirens, about mermaids, about angry tentacled creatures rising from the deeps. They drag him into the sea and he drowns and drowns and drowns. In the morning, he wakes to Wake's chiding and unhappy voice.

He gets up. Puts his boots on one at a time. He eats his oversalted breakfast and starts another grim, glum day.

At least in the forest, it was only wet when it rained.

Two weeks in, his dreams change. The creatures from the depths all have Wake's face. Light from the lighthouse flashes, flashes, flashes, calling out danger and safety by turns. The sea crashes around them. When Wake drags him under, the shock of the cold water freezes his diaphragm so he can't get in even a single breath before he's pulled under.

The flash of the light overhead is muted. Everything is hazy. Wake's clawed hands and grasping tentacles drag him in, closer, closer, his mouth gaping open, lined with razor teeth, a dark hole threatening to swallow him whole, depths within depths, and - 

Ephraim wakes. There's a leak somewhere, and water drips on his face. When he licks it, it tastes like sea salt; like tears. For a moment, just a moment, he pictures himself back there in the ocean, cold water cradling him, floating and free. Dark with flashes of light, its own kind of dreaming.

Then Wake rolls over with another fart and Ephraim is fully in the present, in this cramped, damp lighthouse with this crabby old man.

The stairs up to the light spiral. Sometimes, it feels like Ephraim is climbing them forever, like he can just keep going and going and going, following that spiral up all the way into Heaven. The gate is always locked, metal grate a barred door and a Keep Out sign all in one. It's quiet. Wake has nothing to say when Ephraim delivers the kerosene this time, doesn't even bother to come down.

Outside, the wind howls. It accompanies him on the long walk down, away from the light. Step by step, Ephraim descends.

Ephraim used to dream while he was rolling lumber, too. The dreams were different, but the same. He dreamed of the forest around him. He dreamed of the dark of the woods, the things that waited within. He dreamed of storms whipping the trees, which refused to provide shelter to the ones who'd come to cut them down. He dreamed of bleeding stumps and the howl of distant wolves. He dreamed of rolling logs forward, forward, forward, the work never-ending. He dreamed of the trees coming to life and devouring his team whole. He dreamed of their corpses falling into the rolling corpses of those trees, grinding into flesh and bone into grist as easily as a mill stone turning wheat to flour.

When it was over, Ephraim stood beside bloody logs and looked up at the sky, dark with clouds. A small shape darted down from the cloud cover and dive-bombed his head. It was a gull with one eye and a razor sharp beak. It cried at him with a sound of crashing waves. It was a warning. It was an invitation. It was a herald of things to come. It was carrying a band of shining gold that it dropped into his bloody, outstretched hand.

The next day, Ephraim started off toward the coast, heeding the ocean's call.

"What do you dream of?" Ephraim asks one night when they're in their cups, three sheets to the wind and slumped over against the wall. There's a leak, and water clings damp to Ephraim's back, trickling through the cablenet of his sweater.

"Best not to dream of all," Wake says, and it's not an answer.

Ephraim takes another swig fo rotgut and and lets the wall continue to hold him up. He shivers. There's a storm brewing outside, and it wants in. The liquor doesn't warm him, but it does let him forget moments at a time.

"Did you ever marry?" Ephraim asks instead. "Would you ever want to?"

Wake reaches out a hand. He says, "You've had too much. It's my turn now."

Ephraim has had too much. It should be Wake's turn.

No one on this island is going to get what's coming to them. Or maybe they all will.

Ephraim dreams of the bird. It's only got one eye, but that eye is staring into him, two souls meeting window to window. Ephraim wants to throw rocks until only broken glass remains.

There's a bell tolling again, deep and clear, ringing out over the sound of the fog horns.

Wake emerges from the sea with a veil of seaweed clinging to his face, and Ephraim - 

\- wakes if only for a moment.

"The boat's not coming," Wake says. "Not today."

He goes upstairs and locks himself in with the light again, always keeping it to himself. So selfish. Didn't he know that assets were shared when two people were - when two people - 

"Shhh," Wake says, stroking Ephraim's hair. "You're only dreaming. Go back to sleep."

Things get weird. 

The boat doesn't come and the boat doesn't come and the boat doesn't come. They dig up supplies in the middle of the storm and instead of a ~~wedding~~ feast, there's only alcohol. Calories are calories, and it keeps them warm.

Wake wants to dance. They stomp and they sing and they cry out louder than the storm. They slow dance circles between the beds. Ephraim rests his head on Wake's shoulder as the room spins circles around them. There's a rotten, salty smell in the air, like a bloated corpse on the beach. Ephraim has secrets. He wants to share them. 

Outside, the rain pours.

In his dreams, Ephraim walks a pier like an aisle. To either side of the pier are a host of sea creatures, mermaids and sea birds and tentacled monsters rising from the deep in celebratory adulation. Their singing sounds like the droning of a hundred discordant organs playing a wedding march as a funeral dirge. It's an ending. It's a beginning. At the end of the pier his husband awaits.

His husband draws the seaweed veil aside to reveal Wake's face.

"'Til death shall we part," Ephraim tenderly tells him.

"Death itself won't part us," Wake says.

Ephraim leans forward for a kiss and is consumed.

Ephraim wakes to Wake hovering over him. He's not wearing a veil, but he has a ring on his left hand made of gold glinting warm in the morning light.

"Wake up," Wake says softly, warmly. "Wake up, you wretched, lazy dog."

Ephraim wants to roll over and go back to sleep. He gets up. 

The water is rising. The ocean finds its way in, inexorable as the tide. Ephraim is drowning. He wants to let it happen. Whether he wants it or not, the ocean won't stop, welcoming him home.

Above, the light spins and spins, calling to any nearby ships, calling to Ephraim.

The light illuminates, but Ephraim is meant to languish in darkness. He has secrets. He should keep them. 

He wants to keep them.

But one should be honest with their spouse.

"I told you not to spill your beans," Wake says. "I told you. I told you."

"Does this mean you want a divorce?" he says.

He's drunk too much. The room's spinning. The lights slide sideways, and he slides against Wake's shoulder, surrendering to Morpheus's grip.

The boat's not coming. Wake's destroyed the dinghy with an axe. The log book's full of lies. The tide's coming in.

"I should've stayed rolling timber," he tells Wake as he buries him.

Wake curses him like they haven't been cursed this whole time.

"Thomas," he hears. "Thomas, wake up."

Thomas wakes.


End file.
